Ebola and ethics: Are rich nations doing enough to fight the outbreak?

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

WASHINGTON — The battle to contain the Ebola virus is not just about disease control in West Africa, it’s also about global ethics.

The ethical issues include questions about when experimental treatments should be used in the current outbreak and who gets them. But they also include whether greater global coordination is needed on health policy before such an outbreak occurs.

That’s partly a matter of money. In this case, a public-health emergency is centered in some of the world’s poorest nations – Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. These are countries that haven’t set up the basic disease-response infrastructure called for by the UN’s World Health Organization(WHO).

Source: The Christian Science Monitor (link opens in a new window)

Categories
Education, Health Care
Tags
infectious diseases, research